Initiation by Param Satguru Pune, India — July 6, 2013

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfRpr_YbOk4

Friends, welcome to this second day of our get-together here. I am very happy that we could get together, meet some people individually and collectively, small group of people. It was a nice visit to Pune, and I hope to make another visit sometime to Pune to carry on any leftover business.

I want to talk to you today about a very important subject. The subject is: What is initiation by a Perfect Living Master? What happens when a Sant Satguru initiates a person or gives Naam to that person? What exactly is the process? What actually happens?

There are many kinds of masters; there are many kinds of . There are gurus who teach you how to go within to your energy centers. Those energy centers are six centers lying below the eyes. They’re known as the six chakras or six energy centers. If you concentrate your attention on any one of those centers, you get different kind of wonderful experiences, including out-of- body experiences. But they do not give you any higher awareness. They will give you more energy. They’ll give you energetic experiences. They do not increase your level of knowledge of who you are. They will give you more knowledge of what is around you, what is circulating around you, and what kind of energies are controlling your body, controlling your consciousness in this physical world.

These six centers are called the centers of Pinda. Pinda, as you know, means the body, physical body. So, these six centers control all our life in the physical world. From birth to death these centers are controlling our life, and that is why they’re very important for understanding anything about the energy circuits in the body in relation to the experiences outside. These centers are very valuable and important.

So many of the yogis practicing concentration of attention within themselves have put their concentration on these six centers. Some of them have covered all the centers. Some of the yogis say you should cover all the centers, starting from the bottom, going up, and reaching the sixth center behind the eyes. The eyes… They have compared these centers to leaves, lotus leaves of a plant. They call this two eyes two-petaled lotus. When we start any kind of meditation… I was mentioning to you the value of yogic exercises in which we can put our attention, concentrate our attention on the six centers of energy in the body called the centers of Pinda of this physical body. They will give you information and give you knowledge, even a knowledge of what lies beyond this physical body because the energy circuits go beyond this physical body. Therefore, you can have some very interesting non- physical experiences, and very often we think just by having a non-physical experience we have reached spiritual enlightenment. It is a sort of enlightenment because it is more than what we normally see with our physical eyes and physical ears, and we are now seeing something different, so therefore, it looks very interesting and looks like enlightenment of some kind. But these centers deal with the energy. Energy is different from awareness. Awareness is to know more; energy is to experience energy. There’s a slight difference between the two. To get awareness, a higher awareness than we have as physical beings, we have to go beyond the Pinda, beyond the body, and that is to go directly to the astral body to the suksham sharir or the sharir, the body in which the sense perceptions are themselves located. Instead of seeing them through the filter of the physical body, we can see them directly from our own sense perceptions, which are the astral body.

So that is a much more valuable tool for gaining true knowledge of our own self beyond the physical. So that is sometimes referred to as Anda. Anda means egg. That means origin. The origin of all physical experiences lies in the astral . Nothing exists in this physical plane, including our physical body, that does not have an origin in the astral plane. So astral plane is the originator of all our experiences. When you go to the astral plane of awareness and stay there, understand it, you find that it was a coarse/gross representation of what is lying in the astral plane.

The finer things are there. For example, you have artificial light here to light this room. In the astral plane, you can go to the same room, it’s lighted by itself. Human beings who are in astral form emit their own light, just like some fish in the physical world at the bottom of the sea have their own light. Similarly, in the astral plane, everything has some illumination in it. It’s a radiant form of life compared to the physical because that energy of the astral body is very different from the energy of the physical body. So those…there are separately, separate six chakras to represent the astral system in our consciousness, and they can be accessed, they can be accessed by not going to the lower centers but withdrawing attention behind the eyes. These are—when you sit vertically— these are located vertically below. Those are horizontal behind the eyes.

So, they are similar ones, like we have the four-petaled lotus at the bottom, at our rectum. We have the six-petaled lotus state, twelve, sixteen, and then two. Same pattern is followed in the astral cycle behind. When we withdraw our attention, however hard we may try—we try a system of imagination, which you tried yesterday with me—and that also does not fully take us back. We are still thinking of these eyes. When we try to turn our head inside, the tendency is to turn this head also, because we do not disassociate ourselves from this body.

So, to start with the two-petal lotus is common to both cycles. These six centers end with two- petal lotus. Those six centers start with two-petal lotus and go on to what is sixteen-petal lotus here—that becomes a thousand-petal lotus at the same stage. The thousand-petal lotus, which has been called Sahansdal Kamal, and the thousand-petal lotus has a reflection which reflects throughout the whole astral and physical body. So many people who want to associate that with the physical chakras, they call it the seventh center at the top of the head because of the reflection of the thousand petal-lotus throughout the system of the physical and astral bodies.

So that is why that experience is a remarkable experience. Before that experience takes place, you go through a sky. Every level of experience creates a space, and that space creates a universe. If there is no space, there is no universe. Even a physical space is creating a physical universe. The astral space creates an astral universe. I drew some circles the other day— yesterday—and that represented how there’s expansion of space at every level. The expanded space where we are located, whether we are flying or on the surface, has a sky. The sky is uniquely different at every level. So, you can’t mistake that maybe you are having a dream, it looked like that in the meditational practice. There is so much certainty about each level that you have no doubt where you are. If you are only having dreams and so on, you can have a doubt (Was it a dream? Was it really any higher level of consciousness or not?). But when you’re actually at that higher level, beyond the overlap, there’s no doubt left at all where you are. The sky is dimly lighted in the astral plane always. There’s no night as we know it here. The darkness and the light are mingled, comingled there, in such a way that a gray sky exists all the time. Something very similar to the Pune sky now, you see. That is day and night, 24 hours.

So, everything is always lit up, and every object, every being, every person is lit up. So, they emit their own light, they don’t need any external light. Nothing can be seen in the physical world except by reflected light. Light has to fall upon an object. Light has to fall upon a person. Depending on the colors of the person or the object, it absorbs some colors, reflects the others when we see that color.

As I was mentioning to you, the experience of the genuine astral plane is remarkable. Before that happens, you pass through the sky, the same astral sky, and see the original sun and moon, stars. You discover that the planetary system here, which consists of millions of stars and billions of galaxies over here, originates from a primordial star, primordial system—galactic system—primordial, which exists in the astral plane.

You can pass through it in your astral body. You can sit on the surface of those things. You can go through these. If you see a star in that level, you can race toward the star by practice and go right through it and open up another sky. It’s amazing how so many skies can open up even in the astral plane, that you go all through these. And you need not go. It’s not necessary that everybody has to go, but you can. You can go through those experiences and go through the various stages—the four-petal lotus sphere until the thousand petal lotus comes, it is so bright. Just before that you will—if you are initiated by a Perfect Living Master—you will see the form of the Master, of your , as you have seen him in the physical world.

So good recognition. After that your form will change and guru’s form will change, but you will know who are you and who the guru is irrespective of change of forms. But at that stage you recognize, and then you discover that this guru who initiated you has actually been with you all the time. But he was inside, and now you’ve discovered him inside. It does not mean that he has appeared at that time. He just appeared to you at that time. He’s always been there from the time of initiation. That means when he decided to manifest himself inside you.

This stage creates many kinds of gurus, and those gurus have taken us to that form. Big, great spiritual leaders have come in the past in whose name religions exist today, and you can see all those and goddesses whose names we are taking are all there in this plane. This plane looks like Sach Khand, like our true home, compared to the physical. So, most of those people think we have reached the end. It’s the beginning of all creation. What else can there be?

It is only a guru who go beyond these things, who goes to the next level, where there are no forms. There are just patterns, and those patterns exist in a still higher form where a new sky opens up. That can only be done if you have a guru, have a guru who has himself gone to that stage. If he hasn’t, he will only take you to the astral stage and say, “This is it.” But that’s a lot. Very few exist like that. Most of them give you easy, simple yogic exercises to strengthen your energy systems in the six centers. Here is somebody taking you to a new heaven altogether. All the heavens spoken of in all the scriptures of every religion exist there. All the hells exist there. They actually exist. You can go and see them.

I know some people who made the mistake of going to a hell there, and one can, even without the help of a guru if he has a previous background of spiritual knowledge in a previous life, can go there on one’s own without a guru. Beyond that, it’s not possible because this is the beginning of heaven, and therefore, it’s the end of heavens. Therefore, how can you have anything more than that?

But a guru who takes you to the ultimate state of a universal mind where you find that we were thinking we were all separate thinking beings, and we’re all drawing our thought from one place, which is the causal plane, Karan Sharir. That Karan Sharir of ours, which has another set of six centers like that…two centers, three of them lie within reach of the sky, three lie even beyond. There are two parts of that. These six centers, the final eighteenth center occurs inside beyond these.

Those who can reach the eighteenth center have crossed the mind. Those who have reached the fifteenth center have reached the ultimate state of the mind where there’s only one mind, universal mind. They’re great experiences. But you can’t imagine here that we are all discussing with each other, talking to each other, our minds are individuated here completely. There we find the source where all thoughts was one. That is why most of the advanced gurus have said that is the end because you reach your universality—it’s only one.

But they don’t say one , one mind. They say one mind-soul clubbed together. Therefore, that’s the end. Though there are gurus who will take you there, and they will initiate you and say this is the final stage. You got moksha. You’ve reached the ultimate Om, which is the resonance of that place. Each place has a separate resonance, and therefore, they say, “This is it.” You will believe it because there’s nothing to compare with. You’re comparing it with the physical and astral planes.

That sky of the causal plane is an orange/red color. If you have seen a sunset— you know, when the sunset becomes big, the sun, the setting sun—it becomes easy to see it. It’s too hot and too bright on the top, but when it’s setting, it becomes golden colored, and it’s just setting, becomes a little bigger. Supposing you stretch that sun over the whole sky. That’s what the Brahmand sky of the causal plane of Karan Sharir is visible. You can identify it. It’s a different kind of sky. That whole universe of patterns where they’re coming from is colored like that.

So, there is distinction. There is a different kind of sound, different kind of color, and all causes of all things astral and physical exist there. That is where they say that akash—that sky— contains all records. They talk of akashic records. There is a storage in the akash, in the sky. What does it contain, the sky? All possible destinies that we can have in the astral and physical plane. We say we are born with our pralabdh, we are born with this, tomorrow then we’ll do this, whether we have free will or not. Everything is predetermined, packed ready like a DVD, out there. When we as atma, as soul, descend into creation—that’s the beginning of creation— descended…that we pick ourselves, one of the DVDs and play it along in the astral and physical planes for millions of years after that. We get trapped by the attractions of this created world to such an extent we never go back there from where we picked up our DVDs, our fate capsules, the capsules which contained the entire program.

How many lives does it contain? One life. It can’t contain everything, and we don’t come and live everything. We live one life. Even when we come from the causal Karan Sharir, from the karan state to the causal state to the physical and are born as a human being, this is a very very rare thing to happen, because in a human being alone we have this feeling that we can make a decision, and we have the experience of free will in no other form, neither in the astral plane, nor in the causal plane. You have too much knowledge there. Here, ignorance creates free will. We don’t know what is going to happen in the next minute, so we think we can decide. We don’t know which course to take and our mind says you can take this or that, therefore we are free.

So, this sense of freedom, the sense of having a free will only occurs in a human being in the physical world. Nowhere else. Some people have said the human being is next to the himself. They say he’s made, man has been made in the image of the creator. It doesn’t mean that the creator has face and eyes and all that—he’s just a power, he’s power of consciousness. What is similar to it is that the creator has total free will to create any show, and we feel we have free will—therefore, we are similar.

So that is why that universal mind state is considered to be the origin of everything, all our destinies, all forms of life, which are 8.4 million. At least a lot of it, more than half, 5.4, is the plant kingdom alone. So, you can see human beings come in the last category listed of 400,000 species. One is human being. It includes angels and gods and everybody in that one list. So, all the forms of creation are originating in the causal plane.

How can one imagine there is anything more than that? Nobody can. Even going there, even disciples of Perfect Living Masters think this is the end of it. It’s the universality of all thoughts, of everything. And yet that is not our true home. Only those who have gone beyond that, those are called Perfect Living Masters, those who have gone beyond the universal mind and into regions of pure soul, where there’s nothing—that’s spiritual region. The spirit is the name of the soul, not of the mind.

The mind’s stages stop at the causal region. Above that there are two types of gurus who go beyond. Some are called Sadhgurus, and some are called Satgurus. The difference between a Sadhguru and a Satguru is a Sadhguru has crossed the mind, reached the state, discovered what a soul is, what atma is, but he is not merged in it. To merge in that, you go beyond to the true home where there is nothing but one. And you merge in, become one with everything. That is Satguru.

Therefore, the terminology used is that you go from the physical plane, Pinda to Anda to Brahmanda, and Brahmand then goes on beyond the mind to Par Brahm. Par Brahm is the stage where Sadhgurus take us. Then beyond Par Brahm is the origin of that which we can’t imagine where it came from. The negativity, for example. Time, for example. The traps here. Where did they came from? When we are going continuously higher and higher and understanding more of the true nature of creation, how come, where does negativity come from in the lower regions? Where do hells come from? There has to be some origin beyond the mind, which creates these.

Above Par Brahm and between our true home, Sach Khand and Par Brahm, lies the area from where negativity originates. That is a darkness of a kind which you can’t find anywhere. After all the lights, after all brightness, we still pass through a darkness which is the origin of darkness and negativity here. It is like a dark cave. Even the soul at that time crossing that has the light of sixteen of these physical suns—that’s the light—it’s too dark for this light to cross through. The biggest difficulty is that darkness is not steady. There’s just a little metaphorical thing I’m telling, the darkness is not steady. It is revolving. In Indian literature we call it Bhanwar Gupha. It’s a huge cave, and it’s in the bhanwar, it’s going on whirling, the whirling cave that is swirling.

Therefore, you enter hoping, “Okay, I’ll shoot through.” (These are physical examples given of a thing that’s not physically describable.) That we shoot through and come out the same place where we entered because it was whirling, and we don’t know where it enters and where it ends. It is only the light of a Sant Satguru, Perfect Living Master, who has at that time the awareness and knowledge—consciousness—of the true home carrying with him that we can cross through that. That cannot be crossed by a Sadhguru, cannot be crossed by any of the other gurus that I’ve been talking about. Those are very very rare. You can count at any time— even the most of them, in Kali Yug there are more than in other ages—even then you can count them on the fingers of your two hands at any time. There never have been so many.

But they are there for those who seek to go to their true home. It depends on the seeker. These , perfect saints like these, do not come for themselves. They come in response to the call of the seeker, who says, “I want to go home.” Who are these seekers who say, “I want to go home”? In a story form, it is told that there are so many in our true home—collectively one soul and at the same time many—that the one and the many become the same thing. These many souls were all in a whirlwind of joy living in their own true consciousness of love and intuition, knowledge—everything was there with them. Then some of them wanted to have an adventure and said, “Let’s go out for an adventure into new creations. Consciousness can create anything.” So, we created levels of experiences, one after the other, right up to the physical level.

So many souls who wanted to go to negative experiences so that we can come back and compare with the positive, they came for a little adventure. Can you imagine we sitting here all came for adventure? How we got trapped here? We came to attend a carnival, to see a show, and go back home. We got caught up and think this is our place, that we are now trying to acquire things which are meant only for use and for experience and then we move on. We move on anyway. In the physical body, nobody stays forever. Astral body, nobody stays forever. Causal body, nobody stays forever.

The only immortal thing, which never changes is the soul, the atma. That never…it’s immortal, the only immortal thing is the atma. None of these other things are there. They all disappear. All this show, big show, of creation, of Pind, And, Brahmand—all this dissolves from time to time. In Pralaya (Dissolution), the astral and the physical planes are finished. In Maha Pralaya (Grand Dissolution), everything disappears except the top part of Par Brahm and our Sach Khand, true home. Everything else disappears—and comes again. This show has been repeated millions of times. It’s a continuous thing. Creation/creators is a continuous thing now. Therefore, the Perfect Living Masters who take us to our true home are, indeed, very few.

Now, what is initiation by a Perfect Living Master, the subject with which I started? Initiation by a Perfect Living Master is not telling you how to meditate. Let me first say what it is not. It is not telling you what words are the appropriate mantra. These things can be done by anybody. It is not saying that you sit in a certain asana and perform these exercises—that is not initiation. Initiation is an acceptance by a Param Sant Sat Guru, a Perfect Living Master, operating from Sach Khand while he’s in the physical plane. Not that he has come down. He is at all levels at all times. If he’s not, he’s not a Param Sant Sat Guru. Even when he’s sitting in a physical body here, he’s in touch with all levels and can talk directly about every level, because he’s not reading about it, not remembering it, he’s there.

Any disciple of his can also go there and become like the Master. He does not come to make you better people. He does not come to judge how good or bad you have been. He does not judge your . He picks you up because you got a promise when you first came. “If I am not happy there, will you come and take me back?” The Creator promised, “Yes.” That is the role of a Perfect Living Master will take you back home. He performs all kinds of different things here, mysterious things. Something which we only try to understand—why does he do this? He does those things not because he’s teaching you something. His role is not to teach; his role is to take you back home, which is different from the roles of all other teachers. All of the teachers teach you how to be better, how to get knowledge, how to go within, how to do energy exercises—they teach you all these things. The Perfect Living Master does not come to teach. He comes to take you back home.

He will teach if you want to be taught, which you want to do most of the time. That’s the problem of the mind. The mind will not accept anything unless there’s a struggle for it, unless we work for it. The mind says, “No way. Unless I struggle and work for it, I can’t get anything because I never got anything in this world. How can I get something on this spiritual path?” Therefore, for the satisfaction of the mind, he teaches. For the satisfaction of the mind, he says, “Repeat this mantra.” For the satisfaction of the mind, he says, “Do these exercises.” Just to satisfy the mind, get the mind out of the way, he’s doing all these things.

The truth is he has come for the soul, and when he initiates a person, it’s an acceptance—your time has come. You got a promise, original promise, that if you are not happy in this creation and get trapped somehow, will somebody come and take me? The Creator himself promised, “Yes. I will myself come and take you.” Because the Creator is totality of consciousness. Creator’s not a being. We make him a being because we like to make a person there to help us. We need a friend like ourselves. Therefore, it is the same power of consciousness—of totality— that appears exactly in the same form as we are and at the same level as we are.

Masters have appeared all the time where there have been seekers, in any part of the creation. It’s not only on the planet earth. They’re doing work in other areas of creation also. They’re also working on other levels of consciousness. There are souls trapped in different places. It’s a very big network that is going on. This is a very small slice. What we see in the physical plane is a very thin slice of creation. But you can see the rest of it when you go within and ascend one by one from one stage to another. It’s a very big thing.

So, when these Perfect Living Masters come, and they spot the marked souls for whom they have come, they will take them home whether it needs teaching, whether it needs meditation, whether it needs any other device to take your mind out of the way, because they know nothing is stopping you from going home except your own mind. If you look back, there’s nothing that is obstructing us. Our seeking is natural. We all have a longing, but we don’t know what it is—the mind has suppressed it. Our soul always longs. It’s not that the soul has to be trained. The only part of us which doesn’t need training is the soul. Mind needs training, body needs training, astral body needs training. Everything needs training, except the soul. Soul is pre-trained. It only has a few functions to perform by itself without the help of the mind, without the help of the body, without the help of the senses.

Those are: an experience of love, where you can feel one with another. Love is not somebody liking somebody. That is attachment. There’s a big difference between attachment and love. And we’re using the word love all the time. We are attached to things: “Oh, I love my house, I love my car, I love my children, I love my parents, I love…” They’re using the word love when all they’re saying is, we are attached to them. Because in attachment your awareness is of both. If you say, “I love so-and-so,” you are aware at that time of yourself and that person. In love, you forget yourself. The person occupies the whole of your consciousness. Love is an identification with someone else, even in the physical world.

So therefore, love is not made up by the mind. No amount of thinking can make love. Spirit automatically, soul automatically has love, automatically falls in love. It’s a natural talent of the soul, not of the mind, not of the body. But from there, it transmits down all the levels. So, when you are in a pure state, intuitive knowledge is a pure function of the soul and not of the mind. You cannot have a gut feeling suddenly and say, “I know this,” unless it is a spiritual knowledge, unless it’s a knowledge of the soul. That gut feeling—that intuitive knowledge—does not come from the mind, does not come from any other source except your own state of consciousness beyond the mind, which is your soul.

So that is why there’s some function—beauty, for example. You say, “Enjoy beauty.” Suddenly say, “Oh, this is beautiful.” What makes you say that? It’s not the mind. In fact, if it’s beautiful, then, say, analyze with the mind. What makes it beautiful? Beauty will disappear. If you have a wonderful painting in front of you, and you look at the painting—“that’s a beautiful painting”— then cut it into little pieces and make one square inches of the painting and put it on a heap on a table and go over all the pieces hundred times you’ll never see the beauty. But that’s not what we do. With life…life when seen as a whole is beautiful. When we see it in pieces of here, there, today, tomorrow, it becomes ugly. You can’t even see the beauty. The capacity to see the whole exists only in the soul. The capacity to break into pieces and see it is the mind.

So, you will notice that in the whole setup of creation, the mind has been given totality different roles than the soul has its own natural roles. So, when you reach that state, you will find that those natural roles draw you to true home, and you are so happy. But there are, according to this story, story of creation that some souls came for an adventure. What about the bulk of the souls? They are still there. So, when you go back, you meet all those old souls who never came to this world and who are singing and dancing in joy, but you dance even more. You jump higher. They say, “What is wrong with you? What is so special with you? You are the same soul like we are.” We tell them, “You don’t know what you’re missing.” Because they never saw the other side.

So, the ability to see the other side is what intensifies your experience of bliss and happiness and joy. All this bliss they talk of only becomes really blissful if you’ve seen the non-blissful states of creation. So that is why, when we go back it’s a great experience which you would never have if you’d never come here. The very purpose of creation becomes clear at that time, that it was to intensify the experience of our true home, that which if we had never left we would never have known what we have. People who live in a very nice luxury home, the children grow up, they think it is natural—they don’t even appreciate it. They go out and see poverty, they come back, “Oh, we are very lucky we have this.” It’s the same thing, that when we go back to our true home, that’s what happens.

When the Perfect Living Master initiates us, he establishes himself inside us, establishes himself as a true friend outside. It’s a dual promise that he makes. He becomes a permanent friend without judgment. He doesn’t say, “Okay, if you behave good, I’ll be your friend. If you misbehave, sorry.” That’s not it. That’s not a Sant Sat Guru at all. He knows you are in a trap. He knows you are subject to the five vices. He knows that karma is a very big trap you’re carrying from the past.

When you pick up a DVD from the causal plane to come down here, which contains your destiny, it contains one life, but there can be no life here unless there is karma in the past life to create it. The system is like this. The system is no event can be created in time here in the physical plane unless there’s a cause for it in the past life. So past life is a necessity. When you come first time, you have no past life. How do you then create? The past life is built into the DVD you pick up. Not one past life, infinite past lives, because each past life requires further past life.

When you come in one life, you can look back into your life which you never lived. It’s a very big trap. You’re coming for the first time—pure soul, having nothing to do with this trap over here, and you come here and suddenly you have past life karma we are living in. Why? Because the life you chose had to be sustained by a past life. Then because of the karma you’re now able to create with your free will—only available to human beings—you create a future life and more future lives, endless both sides.

How can you design a better trap than that? Whoever designed it did a great job. It’s infinite! It’s permanent! If these saints were not here, if these Perfect Living Masters were not here, there is no way I can think of that you could escape from this trap. It is so well-designed. The trap of , the trap of past and future lives—lives you never lived—and yet they are your past lives. What can be a bigger trap than that? You pick up one life. Then the question arises: How could we be so stupid that when we came, we picked up a life and seeing this is the horrible past lives, and we are going to go through these things? Why did we not pick up something where we’ll be happy all the time?

Well, the difficulty was that if you’re happy all the time, you cannot be in the physical plane. You have to be in the astral plane. If you want to be unhappy all the time, you can’t be here either. Human being does not create of all happiness or all misery and unhappiness. It consists of a mixer, mixture. The mixture is needed to be able to have the ability to have free will. If all is happiness, where will you use your free will? If all is unhappiness, where will you use your free will? Free will—the experience of free will, the experience of making choices—arises in a mixed life. So, the human life is always a mixed life.

Some have more happy moments; some have less happy moments. But there is a nature in happiness that happiness looks like passing faster. Unhappiness seems to slow down. Therefore, looks we are mostly unhappy. Actually, it’s well divided. But Oscar Wilde says in his book on suffering, he says, “What is suffering?” He says, “Suffering is one long moment.” When the moment doesn’t end, we are suffering. When it ends very quickly, you are happy.

So, since the speed of experience of happiness and unhappiness is different and we use it with friends chatting away for three-four hours, times just passes. You sit in meditation or in this class, which is boring, and you don’t like it, time doesn’t pass. So, it’s the same thing. So overall, as an experience, it looks like there’s more unhappiness than happiness in this world, which is a good thing because if you are not unhappy, why would you like to go home? Therefore, it’s like a door. These little devices have been made like a door for those who want to go back home. “Okay, now I’m fed up. I want to go. I’m tired of this.” Great! People say, “Why? What are you talking about? I’m talking of my unhappiness. You are saying, ‘Great?’ I’m saying I’m feeling lonely. I have no friends, nobody. And you are saying, ‘Congratulations?’ How can you put the two together?”

Because I am seeing from a different point of view, that you are now ready to get out. You have a possibility to get out. You have become a seeker of something beyond the physical. So that is why these Perfect Living Masters come for seekers. They initiate the seeker. The moment you’re initiated, your account here is finished. That’s not known to most people. The law of karma is suspended at that point. That means all previous births’ karma, which we call sinchit karma, is destroyed at the time of initiation.

It’s a huge change. The sanskars, your attitudes, which are made up of the sinchit karma, change. Attitudes begin to change. You begin to look at things differently. Then, of course, pralabdh remains. Only that part of your karma remains which will sustain your life in this life. Why? Because unless you have the remaining remaining period this life, how will you the other things to escape back? To enable you to have the possibility of working your way back with the mind, with the body, with everything intact, you are still left with the pralabdh, with the destiny of this life. So, you go through that. If there are difficult periods of your pralabdh in this life, which interferes with your meditation, a Perfect Living Master lightens them up for you.

So, you say, “This is too hard for me.” He says, “Okay, it’ll become light.” To the extent, they say, “Sooli ka sool ho jata hai.” That means instead of being hanged on the gallows, you can just get a pinprick. To that extent, a Master can help you after initiation.

Initiation is the greatest event that can happen. Initiation by a Perfect Living Master changes everything, changes the course of life. When you die, if you’re not initiated, you go through a different process, the process of angels of death. Yam Doots come. They draw you out from your physical body. They take you. You don’t want to go. You are attached here. They pull you out, and they take you before the law of judgment. They read out to you: “This is your bad karma. Now this is what you’re going to do for it.” They say, “Now you have done so many bad things, you’re entitled to thirty days in heaven and twenty days in hell.” They never cancel each other. The law of karma is very strange. It never cancels. You can’t atone for things. These pundits come and tell us, “You give so much wheat and so much money and we’ll cancel your karma? No, that’s another karma. Every action you take is a karma. How can you cancel by another karma, you add up more from this. Nothing in the law of karma cancels each other. If there is any way to mitigate karma, it is to meditate more. Meditation can mitigate the karma. That means it’ll look like the karma is happening, but the effect on you will not be the same. You will have an accident and no pain. “Say, “What is this? This is strange.” Mitigation starts with meditation, because meditation is one of the processes of going back home. So, there is that change, but otherwise, the law of karma is, even you have done the best deeds— all the charity, everything, good deeds in this world—you’ll go to heaven for limited time, depending on your deeds.

In between, or before that you have done one bad deed which requires going to hell for one day, you will go to hell for one day in spite of all the stays in heaven. In fact, the last choice you get when you die in a physical body is, if the chart shows—your karmic chart from where the pralabdh is being made for the next life—if the chart shows that you have to go to heaven or hell, or both, the last choice is given to you—which one will you go first. It’s not that you will not go. Choice is: Look, your destiny says next life 15 days in heaven, 15 days in hell. Where do you want to go first? You know, most of the people can’t decide this. Some quickly decide. I am asking a theoretical question to you, hypothetical question: If you guys were given this option at the end of your life—15 days in heaven, 15 days in life (hell)—how many would like do heaven first? How many would like to go to hell first? Pretty good. Well divided. Those who say we want to go to hell first, say, if we go to heaven first, the idea of hell will make heaven like hell. Those who want to go to hell first say let’s get that out of the way and enjoy heaven. I have seen very often there’s a fifty-fifty division. So that’s the last choice one can get. Otherwise, the pralabdh follows.

If you are initiated by a Perfect Living Master, you do not face the angels of death at all. At the time of death, your Master appears—your guru appears—and he takes you to an appropriate place, if necessary. If he finds it is not necessary for you to have a rebirth, then it’s done. You may have to spend time in the astral plane, causal plane, to pay off any remaining small part of the pralabdh of one life. But if not, he can take you back straight. I’ll tell you how to go back straight and how to go slowly in a little while.

But the fact that Yam Doots don’t appear, the angels of death are nowhere there, your own guru appears and says, “Welcome.” If you have been doing meditation and have the form of the guru already appearing in your meditation, it looks like a homecoming. You are never afraid of death if you are able to withdraw your attention and die while living. Fear of death totally disappears because you know you are not going to die, the body is going to die. You are more alive after the physical death.

So therefore, the fear of death is only the fear of unknown. We don’t know what will happen. We don’t know if there’s a life after death. We know nothing. Therefore, we are afraid. But if you know, there’s no fear. So, the knowledge of what happens when you die is a very useful thing and can be acquired while we are living. We don’t have to just die—actually die—we can simulate death.

Meditation is an art of pretending to be dead. Yes, you put your attention here in the brain area behind the eyes and pull the attention by constantly staying there through meditation, through , through hearing the sounds inside, and through the dhyan, putting everything inside the head. Your attention is withdrawn from the whole body, and it’s like dying. Then you step out of the body and you see the body sitting, as you will see when you actually die—you will see the body sitting there. Because you’re still in the overlap. You are still where your physical and astral are overlapping. So, your physical body is dead; the astral body is alive and can see doctors trying to revive you, and you laugh at them, but they can’t see your laughter. They are in the physical body with very closed, very limited vision. You can see much better than them.

So, the fact that at the time of death a guru appears is a very big change. Therefore, initiation is not merely teaching a way of meditation. Initiation by a Perfect Living Master is the end of your show here. They say once you’re initiated, forget about everything. It’s done. Only the remaining part of your karma here, go through it peacefully with a reassurance. If you’re meditating regularly, this is definitely your last life. You’ll never come again. Depending upon your desires and attachments, some of them may be fulfilled in the astral plane, causal plane and so on. And then, go home.

Those who have given up desires (“We are fed up on desires, we have fulfilled all our desires in the physical plane, we’ve done whatever we wanted, nothing left to desire.”) they don’t stay anywhere on the way. They go right up. Therefore, it’s a… There are people who are artists, very artistic, and they love beauty in a physical way, they see that, they stay in the astral plane seeing the same things in a much better way. They like it, and then they make progress slowly.

It’s not that everybody shoots home immediately. Everybody takes their own time, but there is no creation of karma there, because you can see what you’re going through. It’s planned, pre- planned. You know the whole of the future yourself. So, it’s a pre-planned ride, like you go in a carnival and sit on those little horses going up and down—I don’t know what they are called. But when you go on those rides, you know where the ride is going. You still enjoy it. It’s not that you have to say, “Now where will the horse go?” We only say, “Here.” In the physical world, we don’t know which way the horse will turn. In the carnival, we know the way the horse goes, and we still enjoy the ride. Astral rides are like that; astral life is like that. The whole of astral life, you enjoy it.

So therefore, some people after initiation, they spend time in these areas until they reach home. Masters give long ropes. They say, “This is your last time. Have a good time wherever you like.” They give a long rope even in the physical world. “Okay, Guru Ji, give me some time, I’ll finish it.” “Go ahead. Here’s a long rope to you. I’ll pull you back, anyway. The end of the rope is in my hands. Therefore, I’ll pull you back. You want to, the desire is there, fulfill it here. Why stay on the way? If you don’t fulfill here, you’ll have to spend time on the way.” So, everybody’s nature, sanskars carried so far, are different, and their pace of ascent even in higher regions is different.

A Perfect Living Master can initiate you without speaking a word. It’s not a spoken thing. An old man from a village, very poor man who had no money, suddenly had a dream of my Guru Ji, Baba , Great Master. Great Master told him, “You can come. You have done work in the past. You have bad karma now. Doesn’t matter. You can get initiated. You can get naam.” He saw this in a dream. He said, “I must go.”

He had no money to buy a ticket, no money to buy a bus ticket. He took up a little bag of his few belongings, very poor man, began to walk. The village was so far away it took him almost a month to come to the Dera, and when he arrived that was a time when Great Master was just stepping out of his house. We people who were standing outside, you know, just folded hands, Master is coming, and we’re greeting him. This man comes, a little, all full of dust, and carrying a little bag with a little small stick on his back almost. That was all belongings. When he saw the Master with his white beard coming out, he dropped everything and ran and fell at his feet. He said, “Maharaji, give me naam.”

You know what the guru said? He said, “What? Once again?” He didn’t say, “I will.” “What? Once again?” Everybody being surprised. We all were surprised. Why he is saying, “Once again?” This man is seeing him for the first time. So, then he [said], “Oh, you mean the words. We’ll give you tomorrow.” Then he said, “I gave you naam one month ago when you left your village, when you had the dream. That was the naam for you. That was the initiation.”

Initiation is something very different from what we think. We think it is a transmission of teachings, that we can read out the instructions how to meditate and that’s initiation. Initiation is something totally different. It is the Master placing himself inside you, taking responsibility for you. He takes responsibility to such an extent that if you let him, he’ll do everything for you in this physical world and anywhere else. He’s inside you. You manifest him inside yourself through a little meditation, and thereafter, all your work is done by him. It looks like you are doing, but you are aware that you are not doing it. He’s doing everything. It’s such an amazing experience that a power that’s sitting inside you, which you can see, see as the space of the same person who’s outside. That person is doing everything for you, including meditation. Now that’s a great deal, I think. Meditation is so hard to do, he’s even willing to do meditation. You close your eyes, sit down, “Do it for me,” he starts doing it for you.

This is initiation. It’s not that you teach, now you struggle, and now work hard, you are to go somewhere. Other teachers will make you teach that, do that. Not a Perfect Living Master, Param Sant Satguru coming from Sach Khand and retaining Sach Khand with him when he’s talking to you. That’s not the same thing. Therefore, initiation by a Perfect Living Master is the greatest event that can happen. I can’t think of anything better than that, anybody can ever get.

If you get initiated by a master who is not a Perfect Living Master, don’t worry, because if he teaches you to go within, he’s putting you on the right track. If you’re seeking is there, you will find a Perfect Living Master; in fact, he will find you. The secret is seeking continuously inside. “I want more, I want more.” That’s it. If you want more, you will get more. There’s no question. Now, new books are coming up, new videos are coming in the USA, a book called Secret. I think they are selling here also in India. Secret says law of attraction—whatever you want, you can get it. In , Guru Arjan Dev’s, fifth guru’s, bani, he says, “Jo mange, thakur apne te, soi soi deve.” That means whatever you ask, you get it. That man says, Secret guys says, “Whatever you want, you can get it.”

Both have one—same—catch, that you should ask without doubt. If you have a doubt (“Maybe I’ll get it or not get it”) you’ll never get it. Now, to build that kind of faith requires meditation. We go back to the same square one. So therefore, both are true. Whatever you want, you can get. It’s true. You can test it out. If you want something with faith—unshakeable faith—you’ll get it. You can draw a list of things and say, “These are what I want,” you’ll get all of them.

The truth is that when you say a Master is initiating you, who is the Master? Master looks like another person as a being in the physical world. In the inner world, he looks like a friend who is always with us. Higher up, ultimately what does he look like? He is you. He’s no different. It’s your own highest self represented by this experience of a person outside. See, outside if it is all illusion. Our shastras say, our spiritual scriptures say that whatever you are seeing is mithya, maya, illusion, not real. If it is not real, how can the guru be real? It’s part of the same mithya, same illusion. If this illusion is outside, how can illusion help you? We’re trying to get out of illusion, trying to get help from illusion?

The answer to this question was given by this famous swami Vivekanand. He came to America and spoke in Chicago in the World Congress of Religions. There he spoke—he was picked up by a woman sitting outside her house. He didn’t know that he was going to be speaking at that convention, but he spoke. For two days, he said, “This world is unreal. ’s inside. It’s like a projection from inside. Truth is inside. Outside is all maya, mithya, illusion, not real.”

On third day, he said, “Two days I have been telling you everything is unreal that you are seeing, then I must also be unreal if you are seeing me. How come I am telling you to listen to unreality to get something? How can you get something from unreality?” He said, “There is a difference between this unreality, which I am representing, and the rest of the unreality. The other unreality is holding you back to itself. This unreality is pushing you back into your own self to find what is reality.”

So, the illusion is serving a purpose. It’s the illusion of what? It’s the illusion of your own highest self. Ultimately, you find you are only helping yourself. A guru is your own highest self helping yourself to go back home. This truth is so remarkable that we divide, the mind has to divide, you can’t be your own guru, and yet you can be a guru by having another form appear before you and say, “That is separate. You are more enlightened. You know more. Come and teach me.” We accept that.

So therefore, it is the same consciousness, the same power. You can have as you go on the spiritual path. Every level increases your awareness, increases your ability to know, increases your clarity. When you are back in the physical world through a meditation session, you come back, your clarity’s increased here also. You can test out. You will never be so clear-headed as you will be after your meditation session. Even in your work here, on daily work. The side benefits, which I call side benefits of clarity, fearlessness, having no doubts, sense of certainly—these are big side benefits. These are perks of meditation.

So, these benefits show the clarity keeps on increasing, but with one caveat, one provision: at one time, you will only have experience of one reality. When you go to sleep, this reality disappears. This world is not there. A dream world opens up. When you wake up, dream world disappears. This one opens up. You go to the true astral stage, this world disappears. Astral world becomes the only reality. You go to causal world, everything disappears, except the causal world is the only reality. The rest are dreamlike states.

You go to Par Brahm, the spiritual life and of the soul is the only reality. Everything else was just made up. You can see it. But when you go to Sach Khand—to your true home—the whole show is taking place there. All five-six become real and, at the same time, become illusion. All are illusion and all are reality. All illusions have been converted into reality. Maya has not been used to create illusion. Illusion has been used to create reality. That’s why this is so real. Every effort has been put into this system of creation to make every level more real than the other one. This has been more real because of laws of physical creation—law of gravity, law of energy, law of this kind, that kind. We are all bound by those laws. Molecules move in that; the atoms move in that direction. Particles move like that; galaxies move in that law. All laws pervade, and laws are the reality rather than things. In physics, they say it’s all hollow if you put everything together. Now they say it’s one pin. The whole creation can be put into a pin. The rest is all space.

So, this is all blown up. Spiritual teachers have been saying this all thousands of years. This is all blown up. It’s only a little seed in your own consciousness that creates the whole universe. Buddha says it is the nothingness from which all things come. Nothingness is not empty. Nothingness contains everything, and when it takes everything in, it becomes nothing. When it opens up, it becomes everything.

So therefore, this created world is our reality at one time. At this time, nobody can say, “Oh, I know there’s another heaven.” You can’t see it; you can’t experience it. It can be imagination; it can be memory. But it cannot be reality at the same time. You cannot have two realities at the same time, except when you reach your true home. All realities and all illusions are visible.

With the result: a Perfect Living Master, Param Sant Satguru, who comes here with the awareness of Sach Khand having contained in the physical form holds it there, and he can talk to you directly from any level, because all levels for him are real as well as unreal. They have been created out of illusion and look like reality—for experience. Why is it made into reality? To have a real experience. Now don’t forget, experiences are all real. The things that are not real— the objects that we say are real because of the experience—they’re made up.

For example, you have a dream. In the dream, you taste a cup of coffee—very nice coffee. Starbucks, or whatever, I don’t know. Say some good coffee and nice taste—then you wake up. The taste of the coffee is still in your mouth. Nobody can say I never drank coffee because you have tasted it. It was a real, genuine experience of tasting coffee, but there’s no coffee and no cup. That disappeared. Drinking of coffee as an experience did not disappear. The cup and the coffee disappeared. What happens to us is that from an experience, we immediately jump to the conclusion the objects creating the experience are real. The objects are never real. The experience is real. Whatever we are seeing around us, the experience of seeing them, the experience of interacting, experience of karma is all real. But the things are not real. When we wake up, the experience remains, and everything else disappears.

That’s a wonderful way of using the power of illusion, the power of maya to create reality. They can create real experiences. There’s a famous dancer in India, Mrinalini Sarabhai, and she had a dance school. Once she anointed me to speak to the dancers, so I was a little surprised. What am I going to tell the dancers? So, I had to make a new kind of spiritual angle to dancing, that dancing is an art form, comes from a higher region, singing is an art form, comes from a higher region. You can’t sing nicely unless you’re connected with something higher. You can’t dance. The art forms come from there. So, I made a nice speech. At least I liked it. At the end, she says, “I have a question that when they say this is all maya and looks so real, why do they call it maya? They should not. Maya means illusion. Maya means unreal. Why do they call this world unreal?”

So, I explained to her. We were having tea. I said, “We are having tea. You are tasting the tea, and I’m tasting the tea. It is real. It’s not maya. It’s a real experience. How can you deny that you are tasting coffee or tea? How can you deny it’s your actual experience? You can’t say I didn’t have it. You’re having it. Therefore, that experience is real, but you’re jumping immediately to the conclusion it is coming from the cup and the coffee sitting in front of you. Maya is to imagine that those cups must be real. That’s the meaning of Maya. Maya does not mean unreal. Maya means a real experience creating the illusion that things creating it are outside. Actually, you’re having the experience real coming from inside and things are appearing outside because of that.

This is only real when you go and see the structure of construction of this universe—how creation is coming up. Then you get all the answers to these questions; otherwise, it’s so confusing. We immediately jump to the conclusion reality’s outside.

Well, it is easy for our mind to assume that reality’s outside. It loves that. I know it. How do I know it? Because people love to go to movies. People love to go and see shows. When you go and see a movie, you sit in the hall and there are people moving. Oh, what has happened now? You are saying, “Now what’ll happen next?” And you really think real things are happening. You know there is only a screen. You know it’s only a shadow. You know the film that is being shown there is behind you, not in front of you. The projector from where it’s coming is behind us, never in front of you. Knowing all this—at that time you forget the projector, you forget what is happening—you say, “That’s real going on on the screen.”

This ability of the mind to make unreal things into real for the time being for the sake of experience is natural to the mind. Aristotle calls it a willing suspension of disbelief. You willingly suspend your disbelief; otherwise, you won’t believe it. Oh, this is not real. You never say that. Oh, this is just a movie, it’s not real. You’re watching intently, crying, laughing as if it is real.

There in Disneyland in Orlando they made a little three-dimensional show. You wear glasses. Everything seems to come near you. They have made a show now that in one scene—because with the polaroid glasses everything looks three-dimensional—at one scene, they release a lot of rats, mice, from a truck, they fall out, and they come right into the audience. When they come, everybody screams because you feel them on your feet. Actually, that is only air that is being pumped from the chairs, but looks like the air, those have come right… Everybody screams. Don’t they know it’s just a show that the…? Nothing is happening in the hall except it’s happening on the screen, and we are willing to take it as real?

Mind can convert a shadow into reality. It’s doing it right now. When it is supported by evidence consistent in the same thing—where you are checking out, “Is it real or unreal?” and looking for evidence of reality—in the same thing you are always duped by it, and say, yeah, this must be real. I asked my friend, “Is it real?” He said, “Yes,” So I believed it. When I woke up, neither friend was there, nor I was there.

So, this is the kind of situation that reality has been created by a very artful way, wonderful way. This creation has been created on such sound principles, and on such beautiful principles that the reality has been sustained and not the illusion. Illusion has been wiped out because the reality has been created with the laws, with different forms of life, different forms of things, interaction, karma... All put together has created such a beautiful mixture. It looks all real, so much so, this looks like the only reality. Everything else—dream. Even Sach Khand is dream, and this is real.

So, to move out of this reality, there is no other way to leave this physical body either by death or by meditation. Better by meditation, because in meditation, you die while living. You can tell others also what is there; otherwise, by death, you say…you scream, “Oh! This is not death! I’m telling you I’m alive!” “I don’t know where he’s gone.” “I’m standing next to you!” “I don’t know…” “I’m pushing you!” “There’s a ghost in the house.”

The same person you loved so much now has become a ghost? You’re afraid of that person. “Well, that was my mother. I loved her very much, but I don’t like how she’s entering the house now.” People are afraid of the same people whom they loved just because they don’t have a body? This is our situation. It’s a very limited, limited kind of experience in a physical world that we go through.

And therefore, having these experiences, what happens after death? Where is our true home? Why are we here? Why was this creation made? Why there’s good and bad? Why there’s evil? Why all this juxtaposition of different negative and positive is there. To get total answers, complete satisfactory answers to all these questions, you have to go within. Answers lie there. Outside you can always debate, you can keep on justifying one thing and another thing. Mind likes ratiocination. That means to rationalize everything, to say I have to accept it in a mental, logical way. You see, this total reliance on logic has cost many seekers a delay in going back home because they want to make it logical.

You know, those who’ve studied philosophy and logic, they know only two kinds of logic. One is called deductive logic; [the other] is called inductive logic. Deductive logic says if this wall is all painted in this bright green color, that portion of the wall is also green. Great news. We’re just describing a small part of what we already know. There’s no new knowledge. Deductive knowledge, deductive logic, has never given any new knowledge. It is just explaining a little part of a total premise given to us.

What is inductive logic? Inductive logic says this wall goes around, and because it is light green, it must be I have to induce that side must be green, but I’m not so sure. Inductive logic leaves uncertainty with you. It is so strong, this uncertainty, it affects your whole life. There is so much scientific basis for this uncertainty of inductive logic that nature has presented to us a principle of uncertainty accepted by physics.

The principle of uncertainty is, if there is a hydrogen atom, and there’s just one electron moving around the nucleus, in which orbit is it moving? Because it can move like this. It can move like this. It can move… a billion orbits that you can make out of one single distance from the core. Which orbit is it moving in? They could not first find out. Now with laser technology, laser beam can go to the size of electron. You put that laser beam at the right distance from the core, from the nucleus, and there’s electron. It doesn’t matter where you put it. You can put it in this orbit or this orbit or this… Where was it? Wherever you put the laser beam, it is there. Then it is nowhere else. Before that you could put it anywhere.

So, the principle of uncertainty created by Planck first—the quantum physics came from there. The quantum physics is a physics of uncertainty. Then we can’t be sure where it is. They have recently seen that nothing can move faster than light, which Einstein said. A physicist in the United States has been able to accelerate one particle at a speed slightly greater than velocity of light. I saw pictures taken by millions of a nano-second, pictures have been taken continuously of a journey. That particle reached its destination before it left. Can the mind understand it? Our mind cannot understand this. This is physics!

Same thing is true of our projections creating reality. There are some things which are beyond the comprehension of the mind. For example, the mind cannot understand anything which doesn’t have time and space. If you say there’s a timeless state in Par Brahm, there’s no way a mind can understand it. All visualization, speculation, consideration, conceptualization is limited to time and space. Can’t go beyond. No thought can go beyond it. No thought can exist if there’s no time and space. We are so limited, and yet we think all the knowledge can be acquired by our minds, that by thinking and studying we can do anything.

Once a group of philosophers, professors, and barristers came from outside to see Great Master Baba Sawan Singh. They argued with him—there were seven or eight of them—and they were arguing with him. They said, “Master, one thing we don’t understand. You keep on telling people that there are things beyond the mind that mind can’t understand. We are all people who have studied hard. We have qualified in our examinations. We’ve done all that with our minds. We have acquired all the knowledge with our minds. How can you say that there are some things which we cannot understand with our mind?” The Great Master said, “Do you guys believe in God?” “Yes, we do believe in God.” “Do you believe God is one?” “Yes, there’s only one God. We believe that.” “And do you believe God is inside us?” “Yes, it’s inside.” “You are eight people. Are there eight gods or one God in eight of you? Did you divide God into eight pieces or is it one God? Can you mentally explain how there’s one God who remains one and is in eight of you? He has never been split. There’s only one. There’s no eight. You are eight. How is the one God? Tell me mentally if you can explain it.”

Then they kept quiet because he had given an example with a limit. There’s a limited capacity of the mind. It cannot go beyond that. Therefore, when we rely only our mind, we are limited. Knowledge beyond the mind, beyond Trikuti, beyond the third world—third world of causal plane—is not through the mind at all. It’s direct knowledge experience, experiential knowledge. You experience it but then you can’t explain it.

That is why people who talk too much—like myself—are vachak gyanis. They can explain things, but they can’t really explain what is happening there. They make stories. They have to make stories, because no language exists to explain an experience that lies beyond mind. Therefore, they have to make stories.

One , Bhikha, he says, “Bhikha baat agam ki, kahan sunan mein nahin, Jo jaanay so kahey na, kahey so jaanay nahin. There are those areas of knowledge cannot be described, and one who starts describing them, be sure he doesn’t know it. If he knows it, he’ll be quiet. He won’t speak.”

Therefore, the idea that we can discuss and explain things… We are using physical symbols to describe every stage. They do not apply even to the astral stage. We are using like it’s a similar, physical world at all stages. In Sach Khand, “Oh, we are like little peoples dancing around.” There is no space there. And yet, trillions and trillions and decillions of souls are there. Where do they live? In one long zero space. And in zero time. They said, “When did the Lord create this universe?” You know, when did he create it? When did this creation come into being? Here it looks maybe many centuries ago? Maybe this earth came three billion years earlier, maybe it was ten billion, maybe Big Bang was fourteen and a half billion years ago? Maybe earlier big bangs took place in a hundred billion years ago?

Where there is no time and creation is taking place there, when is the creation taking place? The only time when the creation can take place is now. It is taking place right now. The time and the past is being created now. Can we understand it? Can the mind understand it? Yet that’s the truth. When they say we have the experience of free will—I’m telling you something a little beyond normal discourse—when we say that human beings have the experience of free will, whose free will is it? Human beings are illusion. Where’s the reality? Only one creator. Then how can you say that this is different from the will of the creator. We think it’s our will. It can’t be our will because we are just made up here.

The truth lies in the Sach Khand in the creator. So, there is no difference between the creator’s will and what we call human will. Yet we are confused. We separate the two. The mind has to separate the two. When you go above the mind, there’s no separation, and you never say you are a separate will. Oh, you have to live in God’s will. Where are we living now? Is there any other will? And yet, we distinguish and make it our will. This is the process of creation. The process of creation has done all this. The truth behind all this can be discovered inside.

So therefore, this—although I talk so much—it’s not a subject of talking. It’s a subject of practicing. A little practice is better than all the amount of reading and talking and discoursing. You can attend one thousand satsangs. If you don’t practice going within, it’s no use. You listen from one ear, it goes away, don’t understand it, after some time even that disappears. Memory is very short for some things. Memory is very keen for something traumatic that happened to you, but memory is very short for satsangs. You forget what was said.

Once my wife decided to check up. What do I speak in these meetings? So, in Wisconsin, she was not attending the meeting, so she was at home, but she invited eight-ten people to come to the house. Every day—we had a three-day program—she called eight people every day. Twenty-four people she questioned. She says, “How was my husband’s talk today?” “Very good. Very good. Wonderful.” “What did he say?” “Mmm…” No word.

Twenty-four people did not know what they had heard. So, you can imagine what kind of memory do we have. When we listen (“Very good!”) we go home, we are back to our normal life. It doesn’t stay. There is nothing that will stay inside with us unless we practice it and make it part of our life. Therefore, please do not take the spiritual path to be one of learning. It’s a path of practicing. It’s a path of actual experiencing, and you must experience—if initiated by a guru, Satguru—you must make progress. If not, must question, must ask for clarification why you are not moving forward. Most of the time you will know yourself.

People want to say we want interview to know why we are making progress, then they cancel the interview. “Oh, we never meditated. What are we going to ask? Master said, ‘Do this thing.’ We didn’t do it. What are we going to ask? We can only say please forgive us, and in the future, we will do it.” Then this interview’s cancelled because they don’t need it now. Next time, we’ll do something. The next time comes, “Oh, forgot.”

See, this is our treatment of the most valuable thing we can ever get in life. What are our priorities gone? Where are our priorities? “Oh, I have to do this job. I have to do this job. I have no time for meditation.” That is wrong set of priorities. Where…if you did your meditation your meditation, all the jobs will be taken care of. Try it out. No, our priorities are wrong. Meditation is at the end. The other things are ahead of it. “Oh, we have so many responsibilities. We have to make earning. We have to earn our living. We have to work hard. We are so tired. How can we meditate?”

These are actual responses of people talking to me. I say, “What about meditating first and then doing that? Or seeing if that becomes easy or not. At least try it out.” “Oh, no, the mind won’t let us believe that.” The mind creates so much doubt in us. Unless we have actually seen something, we don’t believe. This is, "Tab tak na mano guru ki bani, jab tak na dekho apni naini. Unless you see with your own eyes, don’t even believe the word of a guru.” They make this path so experiential. It is not based on hearing somebody and believing it. Then you’ll be following a religion.

What’s the difference between religion and ? Religion says, “This is it. That’s the truth. Follow it.” And then do nothing. Go and hear the same truth over and over again every Sunday, every Tuesday, every day. We stay where we are. Reality is some on a daily life— eating, drinking, going to bathroom and doing all these things, bearing children, going and then dying, in life, which is very similar to the lives of animals and other beings? Where are we different? The difference should be that we lay priorities correctly. That is why they say that the seventh sense if more important than even the sixth sense.

As you know, there are eight senses we have, human beings. People talk of five senses. Five senses are our perception: seeing, touching, tasting, smelling—all that is five senses. But the sixth sense or intuition, which they say women have more—I sometime doubt, sometime believe—that sixth sense or intuition is a stronger sense. People with intuition do better than people only using normal perception. So, it’s a better sense. Seventh sense is common sense. It’s very uncommon. They still call it common sense. Common sense is the ability to lay right priorities. What is more important? What is less important is common sense. If we can lay our priorities correctly in life, life will change. But we don’t believe it. We’re putting minor things, trivial things, little fights, arguments. We’re arguing over some things in the house with our spouses, with our children, with boss in the workplace. Everywhere arguing little trivial things. “No, this was not the…” “He hurt me, he…” “How can I do anything for him, he does this?” What kind of life is this? These… when we keep quiet and smile at all these things, which can also be a priority, things move smoothly. We get provoked so easily. We get provoked into trivialities. We don’t get provoked into, “Okay, I’ve been provoked, I’m going to Sach Khand. I’m going to meditate.” Has anybody ever said that? “No, I got provoked. I got so angry I shouted at him. I shouted back. I had to defend myself.” That’s what provocation is doing. “I created more karma for myself, but that’s all right. For now, I felt happy. I took it out back on him. The other guy says he’s a fool. He got nothing. I remain calm. He got angry. He lost his concentration. I remained calm.” If somebody’s angry with you and you remain calm, he loses, you gain. Have you ever seen that? Therefore, our priorities—our common sense—is poor. We don’t lay our priorities of life correctly.

But the eighth sense is even more important. The sense of humor, the ability to laugh, the ability to be amused, the ability to say, “Look at the show, what it is like.” The whole life can be seen as an amusement park, and the ability to look at it like that and be amused is the highest. It’ll remove you from the trauma of life. This is one sense—the sense of humor—that removes you from traumatic events. Otherwise, you get into trauma, pulled into trauma all the time. “Oh, I am depressed.” Depression comes… Where does depression come from? Has a person who has a sense of humor ever got depression? Never. Imagine this depression comes when you have no sense of humor. You take things too seriously.

In America when they ask me, “Give us a short mantra for life. We don’t like these big ones. One very short.” I said, “I’ll give you two-word mantra. It’ll change your life. Whatever happens, say, ‘So what.” Two words. If you learn this one mantra— “so what”—you’ll find most of the time it is “so what.” You’re paying unnecessary attention to little, small, small things. So that’s why all these are conducive to good meditation. If your lifestyle has changed, if priorities are changed, and you are able to put the right things at the top of your list for what is to be done.

I hope my experiences I have shared with you… I am not claiming to be an adept, expert in anything. I’m only saying I had a longer journey. I was initiated on the ninth of March 1936. How many of you were born? Very few. That was the day I was initiated. I spent my life examining non-initiation states and initiation states. I’ve been examining what goes wrong when we initiate. I’ve examined how we can be initiating the wrong way for a long time. I’ve gone through this period. I’m only sharing my experience of a lifetime, that these… If you avoid these pitfalls, you’ll make a head-on journey faster than I did. I’m saying you have all capability of going faster beyond me. I’m saying this right now because they say even beyond Sach Khand there are states of being where one can go.

There was a soami ji who started the Radhasoami movement in Agra. His name was Seth Shiv Dayal Singh. And Seth Shiv Dayal Singh is original Soami Ji, we call it, because he started this movement and taught . Then he did not want to start Radhasoami, because Radha was the name of his wife, and people were calling him Soami Ji. So, this, he said, “These people are making a mistake. They’re setting up a family foundation called Radhasoami, me and my wife.” He didn’t like it.

Rai Saligram, one of his disciples, said, “No, it’s a good word.” Then he, Soami Ji, clarified. He said, “Put it down in the scriptures.” They put down there: "Radha aad surat ka naam. Radha is the name of the primordial original soul from which we have come. Soami aad purush ka naam. The original creator. His name is Soami. I am not calling my wife and myself by these names. If you, Saligram, want to do it, do it like that.”

So, this word began to spread. It went on and so many lines were divided. Today according to an internet collection of gurus owing allegiance to that particular line of 500, the 500 names listed all saying we follow the same thing. Not only that, their follower said these are the only real ones, all others are fake. Which is wonderful because people come to meetings, and one man told me a miracle has happened, had happened in California, southern California. He came to me, he says, “I’m seeing a miracle.”

I said, “Let us know because if you do two of them, you’ll get, you know, you’ll be invited to the Vatican and canonized. You’ll become a saint. All the requirement is two miracles. So, you have one miracle. Tell me what the miracle is.”

He said, “The miracle is that I have been attending the satsang of my guru. There’s a group there in California, and these guys sitting here in the same audience belong to another group. They go to that satsang. We say they are fake, and they say we are fake. We never meet each other socially because we say they are on the wrong path. They say we are on the wrong path. And then behind us is a third group. They’re thinking we are both fake. Then there’s a fourth group of swamis—they think we are all fake. It is the first time I’ve seen all these people for the first time, listening to you and saying we are all together, we are brothers. That’s a miracle.”

So, I said, “This is very interesting because I have respected all the gurus. I say all are genuine up to a point. All are genuine to the point where they have gone. Why are you worried about it? If a little kid says, ‘Oh, my older sister goes to college. I don’t want to go to this teacher. I want to go to the professor in the college,’ the child is mistaken. He has to go through that course and go up from there. You can’t criticize the teacher because not a professor in a college. He’s teaching at that level. Therefore, all gurus have a function they’re performing strictly in accordance with the great law of this creation. So, to say he’s fake, he’s real, is waste of time.”

Therefore, it is best not to go into this disparity. Go into the unity that we are all trying to find the same destination, to find our true home. I love all these gurus. Most of them I’ve seen as kids, who are today famous gurus. So, I respect all of them. I love all of them. If they come meet me, I treat them in the same way. So, one should not go into these little divisive things. Go into things that unite—and so you’ll all see a miracle as that guy saw a miracle.

So, don’t worry about that. If you are a seeker, if you are seeking beyond what you have got from a guru, be sure a Perfect Living Sant Sat Guru will come and see you—by coincidence. Don’t worry about it. Be at peace. All you need to be a seeker inside. I hope you cherish. You will like this feeling that we can love each other because we are all originating from the same being. We’re all originating from a common consciousness. It looks separate here. In truth, in reality it’s not separate. Like says, when it says, “Don’t you think that guy’s bad— he’s attending your meeting?” he said, "Jia jant sab tudh de sabna ka soi, Manda kisnu akhiye je koi dooja hoi. How can they call anybody bad when there’s no second?” It’s all the same. It’s originating from the same. It’s just been spread out for a show. Spread out for an adventure. Spread out for an experience. How could you call anybody bad?

If you have this knowledge, if you have experience meditation, you will never be able to criticize anybody. You will never be able to do nindeya. You know nindeya? To talk ill of people. That’s the most useless thing. My guru used to say it is a pleasureless sin. Other sins are pleasure. So, enjoy them. But to criticize other people—to talk ill of other people—is a sin which has no pleasure in it. So, avoid talking ill of anybody. They are doing what they think is right. You are doing what you think is right. Eventually, everybody will find out who’s right or not right. There are different phases of going up. So best to be loving for all people. Best to consider they have one origin. We are all together. We’re just spread out for the experience here. So, no need to criticize anybody. Okay?

I hope I’ll get a chance to see you again when I come to Pune again. Until then, the Great Master’s blessings are with you. I wanted to give you a little prashad, with the blessings of my Master, and I am going to invoke the blessings of the Greatest Master. I call him not Great Master but the Greatest Master. I think that this prashad is as valuable for me as what I’ve received from the hands of Great Master. Therefore, I give it to you with the blessings of Great Master who is as present and alive with me as he was with his physical body. Please take it a little at a time. It is food. It is puffed rice. Just puffed rice. But the value of prashad is the association of ideas you have with it, that when you eat it, what do we think of it? So that is why, take a little—it will remind you of something, and that will help you in your meditation also. I would love to come to each one of you personally, but I think it’s a little more convenient if you can come to me one by one. Is that all right with you? Okay. Please. Come one by one, and I’ll give you this with Great Master’s blessings.

Published by ISHA. All rights reserved. This English transcript of a YouTube talk by Ishwar C. Puri is published under a CC BY-NC-SA license, which means that you can copy, redistribute, remix, and freely distribute sections of the transcript, provided that any derivative works or new resulting creations are not used for any commercial purpose and as long as you give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original. License details: creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ Copyright 2019. Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY- NC-SA).